Evolving playing

Hiya! Without wanting to be too inward looking, I've just watched an old video of me playing from 2006. This is without doubt my biggest success on youtube - over 50,000 hits haha... (Give us an endorsment Ibanez!)

Here's a more recent one

These are my thoughts (apart from the change in style, feel etc)

The years have not been kind :-) Where did it all go wrong? :-)

It's interesting how my playing has changed. I've done a lot of self assessment of this kind and it's not always clear how much of an improvement has been made in a matter of a year, over 8 years it's good to see that there has been a real change.

I feel in terms of time feel my playing has improved beyond recognition. In 2006 I simply did not play in time.

I think it was about this time when I had my first jazz guitar lesson in around 8 years, and had a bit of a shock when it was made clear to me just how bad my time was and how important it was to fix it. This has become a running theme in lessons and in musical life in general. I've consistently practiced rhythm for the intervening years in various ways, no end in sight yet! I can hear a few slips here and there in the 2014 video, but overall, there's no comparison.

In any case, my sense of time is something I sweat blood over. I think it's the central concern for everyone who is interested in playing jazz seriously.

So, yes the improvement is a relief!

I've also done a lot of work on transcription - I feel that's great work for starting to hear musical phrases rather than simply rattle through scales and arpeggios.

However - I like the energy of the performance in all its on top of the beat frenzy. I could really get around the guitar back then. Since then I've completely changed my technique to deal with acoustic instruments, I was a stone cold alternate picker back then. Now I play gypsy style - there's some things I can roast on the guitar, but some of the flexibility is gone, which I've traded for acoustic tone. Could always go back though ;-)

So it's reassuring to know things are in flux, and in general for the better. Watching this old video does make me want to get back on jazz-funk-fusion horse again. Is that a good thing? ;-)

Has anyone else done a similar comparison?